Bush appointed oil giant's candidate

United States President George Bush's chief negotiator on climate change was recommended to the White House by ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, according to a leaked memorandum.

Dr Harlan Watson was named in a memo last June from Randy Randol, of ExxonMobil's Washington office, to John Howard, a White House official. The memo was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

ExxonMobil urged Mr Bush to oust the British-born Robert Watson as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has called for urgent action to tackle global warming. He was replaced last month by an Indian environmentalist, R.K. Pachauri.

ExxonMobil made a number of other recommendations, including restructuring the US delegates to IPCC meetings ''to assure none of the Clinton/Gore proponents are involved in any decisional activities".

The final recommendation in the memo was to ''explore the possibility" of persuading the Speaker of the House of Representatives to make Dr Watson - then working for the energy sub-committee - ''available to work with the team [the US team working with the IPCC]".");document.write("

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Dr Watson was appointed in September to an even more senior role, as senior negotiator on climate change.

The Bush Administration has pulled the United States out of the Kyoto protocol on global warming after saying its mandatory pollution reductions would damage the US economy.

Dr Watson said on Tuesday: ''No undue influence was used in my appointment. ExxonMobil haven't had any influence since I've been there."

But Ben Stewart, a Greenpeace spokesman, said: ''Who can now doubt that US policy is being steered by the world's largest oil company?"